“This version of XScreenSaver is very old. Please upgrade”

Post by binarycrusader » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 6:55 PM UTC

haddr wrote: post #34

sanbor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe distros like Debian are more stability/security oriented than feature oriented. New version of software often contain new features that it may introduce new bugs. Debian guarantees that when you install their distro things are going to work and are kind of secure. The tradeoff of having all the software in the distro being checked by people that have tested and checked that everything works well and smooth it's…

Spot on. I was always puzzled why some software just can't come statically compiled. I suppose not all apps can be distributed like that, but most of them can. I can't even remember how many hours I wasted on trying to compile a new version of some program, just to learn the infinite tree of dependencies, newer versions of existing libraries required, build prefixes tweaking etc... Most of that time could have been s…

  * increased storage space
  * increased memory usage
  * increased downtime for updates (since more files have
    to be updated)
  * increased bandwidth usage (total size of download
    for update)
  * potentially increased security risks

Post by protomyth » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 6:59 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #37

protomyth wrote: post #17

I'm more on the BSD-side, so can someone give an explanation on why bug fixes are not being back ported? I understand long term stable, but I thought that was more an API thing.

There's no policy against backporting bugfixes, it just doesn't always happen due to lack of developers. If upstream doesn't provide backported bugfixes, it requires someone else to volunteer the time/resources to do it. For some packages, companies sponsor long-term maintenance branches, or particularly interested volunteers take it upon themselves to do it. For other packages, nobody steps up to do the work, so it…

Post by dfc » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 7:03 PM UTC

jarcane wrote: post #23

Frankly, this is a very good example why I inevitably give up on using Debian. It is not the software writers' fault that your distro can't be arsed to keep its package system up-to-date. Even the unstable branch is routinely multiple versions behind on software. The idea of linking end-user software versioning to the operating system version itself was always a dumb idea, but has become even more absurd over time. N…

  > No other operating system but Linux (and possibly some 
  > BSDs) does this to the extent that the distro model does.

  > Even the unstable branch is routinely multiple versions 
  > behind on software.

Post by notalaser » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 7:16 PM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #47

notalaser wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's basically how all the X11 screenlockers work, sadly.

Yes. But xscreensaver only use straight xlib to paint any UI elements. JWZ's argument is that this reduce the chance of bugs vs using the likes of GTK or Qt to draw password prompts etc.

Post by sanbor » Sat, Apr 02, 2016, 7:30 PM UTC

binarycrusader wrote: post #52

haddr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. I was always puzzled why some software just can't come statically compiled. I suppose not all apps can be distributed like that, but most of them can. I can't even remember how many hours I wasted on trying to compile a new version of some program, just to learn the infinite tree of dependencies, newer versions of existing libraries required, build prefixes tweaking etc... Most of that time could have been s…

Because statically linking everything has several negative consequences: * increased storage space * increased memory usage * increased downtime for updates (since more files have to be updated) * increased bandwidth usage (total size of download for update) * potentially increased security risks In short, trading off all of the above to simply avoid proper release engineering and simplified dependency management is…